Cohoes superintendent recognized by national group as one to watch

RECORD FILE PHOTO
Cohoes City School District Superintendent Jennifer Spring speaks to graduates during commencement exercises for the Cohoes High School Class of 2017 on June 24 at Hudson Valley Community College.

COHOES, N.Y. >> Cohoes City School District superintendent Jennifer Spring is among fewer than two dozen of her peers nationwide recently to be recognized as a ‘superintendent to watch’ this school year by a national organization.

The National School Public Relations Association chose Spring for its list of 21 superintendents based on criteria “demonstrating dynamic leadership with a strong emphasis on communication,” according to a news release from the organization. Spring was one of three superintendents from New York state to be recognized.

“I am extremely humbled to receive this recognition,” Spring said last week. “As a new superintendent who was also new to Cohoes, this honor validates the work we’ve been doing to transform our school district into one of the highest achieving in area.”

Since coming to the district in April 2015, Spring said she has worked collaboratively to mold a new mission and vision for the district to prepare students for success in tomorrow’s world. She also set as a goal becoming one of the highest achieving school districts in the Capital Region.

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“When I asked my leadership team ‘What do we want to be?’ we all unapologetically uttered that we wanted to be one of the best school districts around,” she said, pointing out the distruct’s graduation rate at that time was third-lowest in the area.

One key to reaching those goals was combatting chronic absenteeism throughout the district. Using a variety of communication tools, from videos to tweets, the district launched the Every Minute Matters attendance campaign to bring awareness to the community about the importance of attending school regularly.

“More collaborative and open communication has led to important dialogue in our community,” said Spring. “It’s helping us build stronger school-family-community relationships that keep students at the center of decision-making.”

Through the campaign, the district has built community partnerships to remove barriers to regular school attendance, including transportation. With the district physically encompassing only 4 square miles, Cohoes had never provided busing to its students, but now do through a new partnership with the Capital District Transportation Authority.

“To gauge community sentiment on the transportation issue, we called on our community for input through an online survey. We pushed the survey out through our existing school communication channels and had more than 500 people provide feedback,” explained Spring. “The results indicated overwhelming support for a new public bus shuttle service to provide free bus passes to all of our students in grades 6-12.”

District officials said early data indicates the new partnership with CDTA is having the desired impact, with hundreds of students taking advantage of the service and many quickly becoming accustomed to taking the bus not only to school, but also elsewhere around the city and the Capital Region.

The new service removed a critical barrier for many secondary students, including those living on Van Schaick Island who had to walk more than two miles to school, crossing busy Route 787 to get there. During Spring’s tenure, district officials said the chronic absenteeism rate — those students who missing 18 or more days out of a school year — decreased by 5 percentage points in kindergarten classrooms, from 27 percent in 2014-15 to 22 percent in 2016-17, while the graduation rate increased by 8 percentage points between 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years.

“Communication has been key to building a more positive school community and promoting a new mindset and vision for our future,” said Spring. “I believe we can be one of the highest achieving school districts in the region by working together and strengthening our collective commitment.”